I was shocked when I couldn’t switch back to Google Assistant today. I had tried out gemini for months a while back, and it does not control my phone well. I don’t need advanced AI to remind me to move the laundry in two hours or remind me of my mother’s birthday each year. Or to queue up a specific song on spotify. Also, advanced AI is cumbersome at those things. It’s a real bummer.
I’m assuming this is a way to artificially inflate user numbers to shareholders.
This sucks.
Thanks for the heads up. Unfortunately, it looks like this is coming to all Android devices, with no way to prevent it.
https://www.techrepublic.com/article/news-google-assistant-shutdown-android-gemini/
Inb4 install gOS
Really, I found they completely messed up Google assistant and Gemini is a hundred times better at free form queries. Google Assistant hasn’t been good for two years now.
Your phone will run GrapheneOS wonderfully
Seconded. With GrapheneOS, all google services become opt-in, and you basically are in charge of your own phone again. Did it myself last week, really easy to do + free.
Pixel hardware has the capabilities to do local ai stuff. At the baremin I know its capable of auido transcribing on its own hardware.
I would look into if there’s a Foss project for pixels that can run a local voice assistant. Because its just pointing at a app in the settings and making it default it shouldn’t be hard to find.
The only other option I can think of is setting up a home server with the services you need and using things like davx to sync info to your phone. I know you can run a local voice assistant there no problem, but I never tinkered around enough with home assistant to understand how to get everything the way you want. It sounded like setting up a million little automations on my phone, and then also on home assistant. I have grand disillusionment I’ll get around to setting it up by the end of this year but I don’t think that’s happening.
Thanks for the suggestions!
Just deactivate all the assistants altogether. I always delete all the Google stuff from my phones and I don’t think I’m missing out on anything. I have a clock app including timers, a calendar app, a notes app and a browser… What would I need an “assistant” for?
It was nice for the last many years to be able to say “hey Google, remind me in one month to give the dogs their flea meds” and then sure as shit, one month later, it told me like magic with a ding and a notification.
I wonder what happened to all the scheduled reminders I had already for months to a year from now … Gone, I guess.
The scheduled tasks would appear in the Tasks app for me, yours might be there too
This doesn’t solve the problem of making new reminders, but you can check if the previous ones are being tracked
Thanks for the tip. I’ll take a look.
Open calendar, type in title, set to repeat monthly.
If you can’t understand the utility of being able to speak commands to an assistant for simple tasks as opposed to unlocking phone and thumbing on a screen, context switching several times throughout the process, that is totally fine. You’re probably a smart cookie.
But you have to understand that your experience is so divorced from your fellow man that you should think of yourself as a bit of an alien and the exception. STT voice command interface is incredibly useful, and this is coming from someone who doesn’t use it for privacy reasons either.
It’s undeniably an incredibly efficient user input paradigm, much more so than thumbing on a screen in the opinion of many.
Smart cookies should be advocating for open / local solutions for STT voice interfaces, not denying their proven utility altogether with flippancy.
This wasn’t necessary. They were just providing a low tech reliable solution that works well also. I don’t see that they were shitting on anyone else’s systems for staying organized.
It was a necessary counterpoint to a dismissive comment
Well that point had already been made, and also the person’s response here which you’re saying was dismissive would only be dismissive if you make assumptions
Well said. I don’t necessary think my smartphone is “low tech”, I mean it does all kinds of things and my calendars sync to my computer, my partner, they fetch the holidays etc… But it’s a different user interface. And some people like speech commands better. Maybe they’re juggling 3 kids, cooking dinner and there’s just no way to grab the phone and type something in. That’s perfectly valid.
Bit of a shame most of these voice assistants come with several downsides. I’m experimenting with the Home Assistant voice assistant. That’s nice and can run entirely at home. It’s still mostly for tinkerers, though. And not really suited for tasks like remind me of the dog meds. I guess it could do it if connected to more AI… But then I’m not going to. And I think that’s the beauty of open-source solutions, I can strike whatever balance I want. Maybe sometime soon it’ll be ready for mainstream use and help with issues like OP lined out.
The Google assistant was ok, Gemini is pure garbage. I’m sorry for your loss.
Google Now was almost good.
Now it’s just Google Past
Gemini is a shit show. I tell it to put something on my shopping list and it tells me it did, but it lied. The voice is annoying and it peonounces the word “ninety” incorrectly half the time. It refuses to start navigating for me. I hate it.
I am sorry, but… may I ask why even have any “AI” or even AI in your phone?
Why outsource your life critical/important or any responsibility on some indeterministic algorithms relying on utter undefined probability, on some vendors, and data founded on stolen now meatgrinded art, effort, actual love… of now defaced/unknown people…?
Why not stay accountable for you own life?
If you need some reminders, I would recommend the following deterministic, stable, human-written and convenient apps:
- aCalendar+ (…makes your day, week and month since over a decade…)
- AMdroid (Recurring alarms - daily or weekly repeating alarms, intervals, set expiration, etc…)
The calendar may have regular and synrchonized events from local/remote accounts.
AMdroid, in turn, may add custom actual alarms (more noticeable than basic events) based on these calendar events (e.g., matching a specific text in its description) - you won’t miss it.You realize your solutions are much more cumbersome and different than saying “hey phone, remind me that my football game starts tomorrow at 1pm”, right?
It’s all moot because I’ve disabled gemini on my phone because it is bad at the tasks I used Google Assistant for. So in the end, I just don’t have an assistant app anymore.
Thank you for the response!
No, sorry, I don’t realize what you mean, because it’s less cumbersome, reliable, transparent, and I trust it.
It supports me to stay responsible for my own life.
In turn, I am in peace.It sounds like gemini has inadvertently done you a huge favour
I liked when I could say"hey Google, open Libby app" while driving, and it would open my audio book, or “hey Google, play ______ on Spotify” and it would automatically do it. Gemini seems to always want to search the web instead of actually opening the apps, which is annoying, but I refuse to use it so no major loss for me, I guess.
All that to say, I agree.
Weird I use it to play things on YouTube music all the time and it works fine, maybe there’s a setting or something you need to change?
I no longer have a Google device, and although my current one does run on android, it’s a more basic/less capable version. Also now I use stingray music instead of Spotify, which hasn’t seemed to integrate well into the assistant… So That could be most of my problem, if I’m being honest. But on the other hand I kinda stopped trying to make it work, so maybe it’s better now and I just don’t know!
Not sure about compatibility or relevance to your soecific use-cases, but check out Dicio https://github.com/DicioTeam/dicio-android
What a cool project. That’s on the way to being what I need, but it still can’t do reminders. Honestly, reminders are the only thing I want because of absentmindedness. I think I’ll just schedule send text messages to myself going forward. Not as simple as saying it out loud, but sending a text is pretty muscle memory at this point.
Seems an odd place for people to be ranking google assistants
Well when the replacement assistant touts its AI-ness… Seems reasonable to me
Anyone who wants an assistant on their phone, shouldn’t be allowed to breed, drive, or vote.
That’s a pretty silly length to take that opinion if it’s what you truly believe. If you’re just exaggerating, that’s pretty silly too
Thank you for your input alexa
